NAQT States
Normally, I wouldn't spend time typing this out, but I'm sick of doing tiration labs for chem. So here goes a narrative of what transpired at Stanford on Saturday March 7th.
So the night previously, I had left my backpack in Brent's car after watching Watchmen. Since there were issues that prevented me from going over and getting it that night, we had to do ninja stuff and he left it at MSJ at like 6 in the morning. Great Success! moving on to actual tournament..
We were quite excited since this was our biggest quiz bowl tournament this year, with a field of 20 teams. It was also pretty much the only tournament where all the top teams in the are (except Harker) attended. Although Bellarmine A was missing Tanay, San Mateo had their full roster for the first time and MSJ B was going to be a Dark Horse for the win.
Tournament got split into two brackets, Turing and Church. MSJ A were placed in Church, along with three of the four best teams in attendance: Bellarmine A, San Mateo, and Gunn. MSJ B luckily got placed into an extremely easy division with Bellarmine B being the only serious competition. We pretty much swept the competition, winning most games by margins of more than 250. We demolished Gunn, which was sweet revenge for our miserable Quiz Kids performance as well as the bullshit BAAL match they won. San Mateo went down by more than a 150 points margin. Bellarmine A gave us the most trouble, but we still won by more than a question. So we went 9-0 in preliminaries and got seeded first. MSJ B lost one game against Bellarmine B, and so they got seeded second with a record of 8-1. An impressive improvement from the last Stanford tournament in October, when they went 3-6.
Individual awards were handed out, and our very own Vicky Hwang got 6th place individually. I got the dubious distinction of most interrupt-negs in the tournament, averaging 2.0 negs a game. We both received books for our stellar (=P) performances.
Single eliminations commenced, and perhaps the largest upsets were MSJ B beating San Mateo, preventing them from qualifying to NAQT nationals, and Berkeley beating Bellarmine A. Eventually, it came down to MSJ A playing Bellarmine B for the championship, while MSJ B duked it out with Berkeley for 3rd/4th. Although MSJ A won, it ended on a bitter note because lack of communication/common sense by some people on MSJ B led to them beating Berkeley. MSJ B had already qualified, while Berkeley had not, so there was no reason for MSJ B to try to beat Berkeley, especially since they're all pretty cool guys who deserve to go to Nats. ON that notes, its a pity that San Mateo did not qualify for nats. They have been the closest things to our rivals for the past three years, and hopefully they'll attend the Menlo tournament and qualify there.
Team Appraisal:
Vicky: Stellar Job, highest scoring member on team, and powered some key literature/myth questions. But communication errors during boni led to us losing points we should have gotten. B+
Brian: A little subpar than usual, but mostly due to my excessive negging. Powered quite a lot of questions, but also neged some that shouldn't have been negged. B-
Kirk: Probably the worst performance this year. Again, mostly due to my negging. HIs usually scary power to TU ratio was quite low, but he contributed to boni. C+
Matthew: The usual single sports/science/math question a game. A decent day for him. B-
Youngjun: Although I was 2nd highest scorer of my team, I had way too many negs. Normally I am the highest negger on my team, but I negged double the amount I usually do. Which essentially means that Kirk and Brian should have had at least 10 ppg more and we should have scored about 30 more ppg overall as a team. Contributed more to boni than usual, but amount of negs was really bad. Hopefully there won't be a repeat performance. D
Overall: If it wasn't for my negs, we would have easily broken 400 ppg, and on a Sectional-level packet with our level of competition, that's pretty impressive. Probably the best part was our excellent boni conversion: our 21.6 p/b easily outscored any other team. Our biggest priority is 1.reduce number of negs and 2.increase powers, but unfortunately they kind of contradict each other >_> B
There were definite signs we need to practice more. Our goal right now is top 20 at Nationals, and to do that, we need way more lit and art. Not to mention being able to comprehend uber-fast moderators. Stanford was undoubtedly the hardest tournament so far this year, and it will most likely be the hardest for the whole year (excpet Nationals of course) considering Gaius only likes using easy packets. So very good practice opportunity. Went home satisfied at results but a bit miffed at neg spree.
Sorry bout that huge chunk of text. Back to finish chem lab. Good morning.
So the night previously, I had left my backpack in Brent's car after watching Watchmen. Since there were issues that prevented me from going over and getting it that night, we had to do ninja stuff and he left it at MSJ at like 6 in the morning. Great Success! moving on to actual tournament..
We were quite excited since this was our biggest quiz bowl tournament this year, with a field of 20 teams. It was also pretty much the only tournament where all the top teams in the are (except Harker) attended. Although Bellarmine A was missing Tanay, San Mateo had their full roster for the first time and MSJ B was going to be a Dark Horse for the win.
Tournament got split into two brackets, Turing and Church. MSJ A were placed in Church, along with three of the four best teams in attendance: Bellarmine A, San Mateo, and Gunn. MSJ B luckily got placed into an extremely easy division with Bellarmine B being the only serious competition. We pretty much swept the competition, winning most games by margins of more than 250. We demolished Gunn, which was sweet revenge for our miserable Quiz Kids performance as well as the bullshit BAAL match they won. San Mateo went down by more than a 150 points margin. Bellarmine A gave us the most trouble, but we still won by more than a question. So we went 9-0 in preliminaries and got seeded first. MSJ B lost one game against Bellarmine B, and so they got seeded second with a record of 8-1. An impressive improvement from the last Stanford tournament in October, when they went 3-6.
Individual awards were handed out, and our very own Vicky Hwang got 6th place individually. I got the dubious distinction of most interrupt-negs in the tournament, averaging 2.0 negs a game. We both received books for our stellar (=P) performances.
Single eliminations commenced, and perhaps the largest upsets were MSJ B beating San Mateo, preventing them from qualifying to NAQT nationals, and Berkeley beating Bellarmine A. Eventually, it came down to MSJ A playing Bellarmine B for the championship, while MSJ B duked it out with Berkeley for 3rd/4th. Although MSJ A won, it ended on a bitter note because lack of communication/common sense by some people on MSJ B led to them beating Berkeley. MSJ B had already qualified, while Berkeley had not, so there was no reason for MSJ B to try to beat Berkeley, especially since they're all pretty cool guys who deserve to go to Nats. ON that notes, its a pity that San Mateo did not qualify for nats. They have been the closest things to our rivals for the past three years, and hopefully they'll attend the Menlo tournament and qualify there.
Team Appraisal:
Vicky: Stellar Job, highest scoring member on team, and powered some key literature/myth questions. But communication errors during boni led to us losing points we should have gotten. B+
Brian: A little subpar than usual, but mostly due to my excessive negging. Powered quite a lot of questions, but also neged some that shouldn't have been negged. B-
Kirk: Probably the worst performance this year. Again, mostly due to my negging. HIs usually scary power to TU ratio was quite low, but he contributed to boni. C+
Matthew: The usual single sports/science/math question a game. A decent day for him. B-
Youngjun: Although I was 2nd highest scorer of my team, I had way too many negs. Normally I am the highest negger on my team, but I negged double the amount I usually do. Which essentially means that Kirk and Brian should have had at least 10 ppg more and we should have scored about 30 more ppg overall as a team. Contributed more to boni than usual, but amount of negs was really bad. Hopefully there won't be a repeat performance. D
Overall: If it wasn't for my negs, we would have easily broken 400 ppg, and on a Sectional-level packet with our level of competition, that's pretty impressive. Probably the best part was our excellent boni conversion: our 21.6 p/b easily outscored any other team. Our biggest priority is 1.reduce number of negs and 2.increase powers, but unfortunately they kind of contradict each other >_> B
There were definite signs we need to practice more. Our goal right now is top 20 at Nationals, and to do that, we need way more lit and art. Not to mention being able to comprehend uber-fast moderators. Stanford was undoubtedly the hardest tournament so far this year, and it will most likely be the hardest for the whole year (excpet Nationals of course) considering Gaius only likes using easy packets. So very good practice opportunity. Went home satisfied at results but a bit miffed at neg spree.
Sorry bout that huge chunk of text. Back to finish chem lab. Good morning.